TOLEDO, Ohio — The realization was as surprising as it was momentous.
Toledo, long known as Glass City, needed glass, and it could no longer
be manufactured here quickly enough.

Toledo's mayor, Michael P. Bell, says he has tried to educate residents
about the need for foreign investment and the importance of building personal
relationships.

So Toledo turned to China to make the 360 panels, 1,300 pounds each,
needed for an extension to the Toledo Museum of Art. Some here resented
the move after China supplanted the United States as the world’s
top glass producer. But in the process, city leaders began an improbable
and remarkable relationship.

Over the past seven years, the ties between Toledo and China have grown
numerous. Chinese companies have paid more than $10 million in cash for
two local hotels, a restaurant complex and a 69-acre waterfront property.
Mayor Michael P. Bell has taken four trips to China in four years in search
of investors. His business cards are double-sided, in English and Chinese.

The GSA has regularly had a delegation attend the WSF ever since the
early meetings in Porto Alegre, Brazil. The meetings are gathering places
for various NGOs, SMOs and other groups with progressive agendas seeking
change. Most of the people are members of econ justice, environment, ecology,
human rights, LGBT rights, animal rights, antiwar groups, and in Brazil
there was a major presence of workers, unions, landless peasants and communist
socialist parties. Some folks are concerned with worker co-ops, some with
education, others other with Media. In Tunis, the only place where the
Arab Spring/Awakening did lead to a democratic change and election of
moderates to office, there will be many folks that were part of the movement
to out Ben Ali.

The WSF, which usually attracts up to 100,000 people, is off the radar
of main stream news media, and indeed, main stream academic social research
has not given it much attention. But it does represent the emerging of
a new and ever growing coalition of actors, the poor and disposessed,
not the rich, the masses not the elites, sharing and caring, not profits
and conspicuous consumption. The main principle of unification in diversity
is that “another world is possible”. Many of the 2000 sessions
are in English, most of the students are tri lingual, so don’t worry
if you don’t speak Arabic or French.

If you would like to join the GSA delegation that typically has a presentation
of some of our members, please contact Lauren Langman at Llang944@aol.com.

NOTE: Unfortunately the GSA cannot support any registration
fees, transportation, lodging or other fees. Figure airfare from the USA
about $1200 - $1500 , hotels between $80 and $160, meals about $25 or
so for dinner.

Open Access week is a global event, now in its 6th year, that promotes
Open Access as the “new norm in scholarship and research.”
As the publishing world becomes more commercialized and profit-oriented,
researchers are getting organized to ensure that scholarship is shared
equitably and freely.

A contingent of the GSA/NA was at the World Social Forum in Tunis in
March 2013 and Flamme
d'Afrique was there to cover it.

Global crisis deepens. More civil society activism predicted.

More and more social movements will be addressing the growing inequality
and discontent. That was the conviction of Lauren Langman, a member of
Global Studies Association, who was animating a debate at the World Social
Forum in Tunis. He has predicted a growing civil society activism as the
global economic crisis deepens. He said the crisis now was not merely
economic, but social, with a growing number of people being marginalised,
political, with leaders unable to prescribe solutions for those mostly
affected, and also cultural.